nicholasI had been agonizing over a pitch we were doing for my friend’s commercial. I was waiting on Bobo’s animation treatment to see what we’re going to present. I was walking through an enormous bureaucratic complex. The halls were covered in dark wood with incredibly high ceilings.
As I proceeded down a long hallway it opened up into an enormous, semi-circular auditorium with all the seats filled. Bobo was on stage giving his pitch on our project from behind a podium. In the audience were a number of government dignitaries including Barack Obama. My friend Leon was seated at the edge of a back row. It suddenly occurred to me that it was Leon’s piece we were pitching for.
I leaned against a wall to observe. The lights lowered and the curtains peeled back. What followed was an absurd visual orgy of animation. Bobo had taken the product we were designing around and had integrated it into an extravaganza of CG acrobatics. Lasers, fight scenes, exploding planets etc.
I was delighted by its thematic scope but realized immediately that he had completely overshot the mark and that it was going to offend every one of Leon’s aesthetic sensibilities.
As the lights came back up Leon wandered over to me with his hands in his pockets. He furrowed his brow and very apologetically said there was no way he could work with us considering where he saw the project going. I shook hands with him and gave him my assurance there were no hard feelings.
I went to tell Bobo the bad news when I realized my name was being called over the loudspeaker. Apparently, I had been elected to be an astronaut for a day. I walked up to the podium suddenly attired in a tight-fitting bodysuit.
The podium was suddenly replaced by one of those old-school conical space probes they used for the first earth orbits. I sat inside to moderate fanfare (there were only a hundred people or do in the auditorium). I launched immediately through the ceiling and without much intermediate experience was immediately floating in zero gravity. I remember only having a quick moment to absorb all the cosmic beauty when I rapidly descended back into the auditorium.
I stepped out of the space probe into an empty auditorium. No more audience, just janitors sweeping up and putting the chairs back into place. Someone notified me that as an astronaut for a day I had been granted an audience with Mr. Obama. I was directed toward his office and I immediately proceeded towards it.
As I knocked on the door I realized I had a rolling suitcase with me and I was still dressed in my absurd proto-astronaut outfit.
He opened the door with an enormous, pleasant smile on his face and beckoned me into the room. He was tall and slender with amazing poise. The room was surprisingly nothing like one would expect the president’s office to be like.
It was long and dark and filled with an absurd assortment of stuff. Almost like a cliched room of curiosities where one would find suits of armor and various weaponry in glass cases. His desk was crammed in the back corner behind a pile of boxes. I wheeled my suitcase into the room to be closer to his desk. He shut the door behind me and began shuffling about moving boxes here and there, unfolding and reading random documents.
I began unpacking my bag systematically to get to some garments on the bottom. Normally when I have suitcase dreams I am quite aware of revealing my undergarments to passersby but in Obama’s case, I was utterly un-selfconscious.
So, I began changing out of my astronaut costume and back into normal attire. I had all of my clothes neatly arranged in stacks on the floor. As I was changing I began asking Obama what it was like being President and if there was anything of note he wanted to tell me.
He said, ” You know, one of the great things about being President of the United States is that I finally have confirmation that aliens exist.” I remember holding a stack of underwear in my arms when he said this. I pressed him for information. I got right up in his face and implored him for more. He wagged his finger at me and said, ” Let’s just say that we built a very powerful computer to say hello in every conceivable fashion and we finally got a response.”
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